Image via Sanrio and Sunblink
Hello Kitty Island Adventure is an Animal Crossing style life sim, which means it’s not a game where you rush. While it doesn’t always involve the same passage of time limitation as Nintendo’s title, you can’t (and shouldn’t) try to get everything done as soon as possible. It’d be too overwhelming! Which is honestly why I waited to actually jot down my more defined thoughts on Wheatflour Wonderland, the first expansion for Hello Kitty Island Adventure, as it’s the kind of massive DLC drop that feels bigger than the initial updates.
Now, Wheatflour Wonderland with Cogimyun isn’t all that dissimilar from earlier free updates to Hello Kitty Island Adventure, such as City Town with Usahana and Cloud Island with Little Twin Stars Kiki and Lala. I’d say it leans more toward City Town in terms of of new additions, but it is absolutely more substantial. I can see why it’s a paid addition, even thought at a glance it might seem like it has about the same number of locations as Usahana’s haunt, what with the Floating Fields and Ruins and Royal Gardens. But we are getting six more cabins, nine more courses, 13 places to fast travel to, three kinds of new puzzles to solve, a new Wand tool type, and three minigames. The minigames is a big surprise of sorts, considering the base game only offered six, and the only locations to offer six or more standalone Visitor Cabin homes are the Seaside Resort and Merry Meadow spots. There are also at least 20 quests in this area, some of them tied to Cogimyun friendship levels so I haven’t seen them all, which is a lot.
Part of my suggestion and assertion that you take your time with Wheatflour Wonderland is how long it can take to even start it in Hello Kitty Island Adventure. Not that it is too difficult to gain access to “Potion Problems” to open it up. You need to get through the Kuromi “Potion Hunt” and Keroppi “Open the Nature Preserve” ones in the Spooky Swamp region, which is the first additional area you unlock after Seaside Resort. But as part of that you need to collect a lot of materials like a Blank Book, four Pumpkin Pies, five Glow Berries, five Pumpkins, five Spinips, and 35 Mushrooms. But once you do get in, quite a few of the substantial quests here are tied to friendship with Cogimyun. While we can use items like Friendship Blossoms and Friendship Bouquets to speed that process up, it… just isn’t as much fun as taking our time. Especially when there’s so much to explore.
Especially since Cogimyun is so cute. I think she’s one of the most under-appreciated Sanrio mascot characters, and her appearance in the Hello Kitty Island Adventure Wheatflour Wonderland DLC highlights how cute she can be. She’s extremely happy to see newcomers to the region, especially since it means the Wheatflour Guardians, a take on a magical girl group, could return to help revitalize and restore the area. But she’s also portrayed as sympathetic as her friend Ebi Fry is missing as part of the region’s storyline and when she even heads to Friendship Island for the first time, she’s so overwhelmed that she turns into a (quite cute) clump of flower. Seeing her grow as an individual and become stronger through our interactions and quests feels like it should take place over more time, rather than be rushed.
The number of new crafting and collection elements also get so overwhelming if you rush. If you take your time, it is amazing. You could spend weeks getting through everything in Wheatflour Wonderland, which is what you’d want from a Hello Kitty Island Adventure expansion. There are Wheatflowers that are new. New critters are all around, and I’ve still yet to catch the Flowl that is tied to one of the new types of storms present there. Since we also need to make multiple Magic Wands for puzzles, as well as the optional opportunities to make critter and item wands.
Wheatflour Wonderland is a pretty massive Hello Kitty Island Adventure expansion, and I can see now after playing why it was paid and not free. There’s a ton to it. The main questlines, which are so tied to Cogimyun, can take a lot of time to handle properly. The new crafting elements add a lot of options. The new critters are cute, with multiple ones with special requirements. It’s the sort of DLC you take your time with, which is great for an Animal Crossing type of title.
Hello Kitty Island Adventure and the Wheatflour Wonderland expansion are available for the Switch, PS5, PC, and Apple Arcade mobile devices.